Restaurant equipment vendor — cold email worked once we switched ICP focus
Our initial campaigns targeted independent restaurant owners and got mediocre results. Pivoting to multi-unit operators and ghost kitchens turned the campaign around.
- First two months of campaigns targeted independent restaurants — poor results.
- Pivot to multi-unit operators and ghost kitchen operators was the unlock.
- Steady pipeline of equipment quote requests by month 4.
- Four stars because the ICP error was on us, and the campaign pivot took a month longer than it needed to.
The initial outreach campaign targeted independent restaurant owners. Open rates were OK, reply rates were poor, and the meetings that landed were mostly with operators in financial stress who couldn’t afford new equipment anyway.
We pushed back. SmarterOutbound proposed a pivot to multi-unit operators (3-15 location restaurant groups) and ghost kitchen operators, which is a different buyer entirely — one with capex budget, multiple locations to outfit, and active replacement cycles.
The pivot worked. Reply rates moved from ~1.4% to ~3.2% and the meeting quality improved dramatically. By month 4 we had a steady pipeline of equipment quote requests.
Four stars
The team was responsive to our ICP feedback and the pivot landed the engagement in a good place. The reason it’s not five stars: the initial ICP could have been pushed back on during discovery. Independent restaurants are obviously a tough segment, and that wasn’t a conversation we had before we started spending.
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